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Being Anna Sui
What would it be like to be Anna Sui for a day, to be the head of a fashion empire? We talk to the designer about her inspirations and motivations, and what it took to make it this far.
by chomwan weeraworawit / portraits by apisak vithyanond
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anhattan’s Garment District is where the New York fashion industry was born. It is also where Anna Sui began her fashion career, where she created her rich, alluring world, and where the line between good girl and bad girl appears blurred and mysterious. Anna Sui's quiet headquarters are situated in the heart of the bustling world of fabric showrooms, ateliers and designer studios that is the Garment District. Waiting here in a plush faux-Victorian chair, I’m eager to know how the woman behind this fashion empire was able to create a brand that is still as relevant today as it was when she opened the doors of her first boutique on Greene Street, Soho, in 1991. On the table, an Anna Sui coffee-table book depicts a time when the “supers” owned the runway. The fashion back then was fun and eclectic, a little bit of everything creating a statement in its own right. The woman behind this vision is known for sporting a similar look, one that's always been in line with her brand. Anna Sui, with her shiny, black hair, perfectly even bangs and trademark red lips, is as striking in real life as she is in pictures. When she walks into the room to meet me, she radiates a certain energy and as she speaks she conveys a contagious passion for all she creates. She tells me her story right from the beginning. The Anna Sui story is your archetypal tale of pursuing your dreams. The designer knew as a child, around the age of four or five, that she wanted to be a fashion designer. Her childhood and adolescence were subsequently geared toward making that dream a reality. She tells me how she once read an
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article about two young ladies who went to Parsons School of Design in NYC and later went to Paris where Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton opened a boutique for them. The story awakened something within her and from that day on she wanted nothing else from life but to follow in their footsteps. “As a I kid I always thought, ‘I have to go to Parsons! How do I go to Parsons? I’m just this kid from Detroit, Michigan. How do I do that?’” Anna got her wish, of course. But Anna Sui the brand, and Paris, for that matter, weren't to come yet. First she worked for a sportswear brand called Charlie’s Girls. “It was a great first job,” she says. “I had my own design room with sewers and a patternmaker. After that, everyone knew that I must be a really good worker because she had a reputation for being one of the toughest bosses in the business.” Anna then went on to work for a couple of big companies before starting out on her own. After that, a trip to Paris with one of her close friends, fashion photographer Steven Meisel, consolidated her resolve to start up an eponymous line. One of the first stops on that Paris trip was to pick up Madonna at the Ritz and take her to the Gaultier show. “I remember going into her hotel room and seeing these shopping racks filled with clothes from every designer in Paris. I just thought, ‘She’s so lucky they are gifting her with all these beautiful things.’ When she came out of her bedroom, she already had her coat on and we went to the show, and then when she sat down and took off her coat. She said, ‘Anna, I
Anna always knew she wanted to be a fashion designer. Her whole childhood and adolescence were geared toward making that dream a reality.
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Soon an ambiguous element emerged in her designs. People were asking themselves: does this Anna Sui depict a good girl or a bad girl?
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have a surprise for you.’ And she was wearing my dress! “That gave me so much confidence because she had every designer in the world giving her things and she was wearing my dress. When we got back from Paris, Steven said to me, ‘Now it’s your turn, you have to do a show.’” This was a turning point. In 1991, Anna put on her first show – on the very same block that Anna Sui HQ sits on today, 38th and 8th Avenue. Helped by friends – Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista helped her muster all the models she needed – the show was a success. Anna Sui was immediately on the map and her first shop followed a few years later. Looking back, Anna believes it was fate, or magic. “I had dinner with a friend of mine who was working at Calvin Klein and he said to me, ‘I’m a psychic, you have to open a store.’ I said, ‘A store?! I can hardly afford to pay for my collection, I’m freelancing.’ He said, ‘You have to showcase your collection because you are creating your own world.’ So I went down to Soho and I found the space for the first store on Greene Street.” The Greene Street store is where Anna Sui the brand came into being – a world of red floors, purple walls, carved black lacquer roses, and dolly heads. “My friends and I made dolly heads while I was waiting to hear if I would get the lease,” she recalls. “We created those decorations out of necessity, but they went on to become the icons of the brand.” What her psychic friend told her proved to be true. Once
Anna Sui was introduced to the world, word quickly spread. Before long, her boutiques were appearing in department stores. nna’s world is both rock-and-roll and ultra-feminine. It has always been this way. “When I decided to go out on my own, my main goal was to design for rockstars and people who went to rock concerts,” she says. “But then it evolved very quickly when all the models were wearing my clothes and I could see the stores needed other things.” Soon a nostalgic vintage influence, laced with an elusive, ambiguous element, emerged in her designs – people began asking themselves whether this Anna Sui depicts a “good girl” or a “bad girl.” This split persona was then and remains now a continuous thread throughout the entire brand and all its products. How did her trademark colours – red and purple – become so prominent in the Anna Sui world? “I remember seeing a movie where the girl was a princess and she had a lavender RollsRoyce,” she recalls. “I thought, ‘What a cool colour’ and I asked my mother to make me a dress in lavender and my birthday cake had to have lavender roses. I decided that it would be my favourite colour from then on because it was cooler than pink.” As to whether she has a muse, she says, “I think people can tell from my fashion that I love fashion. I love other designers; I am so
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I put as much excitement in a tube of lipstick as I would in a dress. That is why there's an obsession with my packaging.
inspired by the ‘60s and ‘70s designers – Mary Quant, Betsey Johnson, BIBA, Ossie Clark, Zandra Rhodes. Fashion history, too; in some moments I am looking at Poiret, Chanel and Schiaparelli. I love fashion so I like exploring that and doing the research, finding out more, going to a museum and discovering something I didn’t know.” The success of Anna Sui, of course, is down to more than just great design and passion for fashion. On the business side of things, Anna changed the game for fashion designers in how she approached her licensing. Around the time she was putting on her first show, the city of New York was promoting fashion week and invited the international press to its shows. New York designers were hot at the time, in Japan in particular. As it happened, the head of Isetan saw Anna Sui's designs and was keen to license her collection through the cosmetic arm, Albion – she agreed. It was one of twelve licences she would sign. Looking back now on Japan’s influence on fashion in the 1990s, you can see how strategic this collaboration was in building the brand into the global force it is today. At the same time, Anna Sui was approached by the German company Wella to do fragrances. She recalls: “The head of Wella in the USA went down to my store with his daughter and she said, ‘See, Dad, this is what I’m talking about; this is what you need to do!’” Anna suggested to the two companies – Wella and Isetan – that they could work together and that the licences be global. Initially the brands were hesitant to collaborate, as
the practice at the time was unorthodox, but Anna’s reponse was simply: “Let’s see if it can happen!” “There were bumps along the way,” she says, “but that’s really how I became a global brand.” Anna Sui cosmetics are today available throughout the world and have developed quite the cult following, especially among tweens. Young women can't seem to get enough of the black lacquered roses that adorn her beauty items. The cosmetics function as an accessible point for young consumers – one that aesthetically embodies the Anna Sui brand. Anna says she saw it as her job to “put as much excitement in a tube of lipstick as I would in a dress. That is why there is an obsession with my packaging, the tubes, the texture of the lipstick, the scent. All those things mean that the customer can get the same thrill from a tube of my lipstick as from my fashion.” A good example of this is Anna Sui’s nail polish – not only does it have a distinctive black rose motif carved on the lid but also something even more unusual: a scent. Nail polishes don’t usually have a nice smell, but Anna Sui’s do. How did that come about? In this case, technology married whimsy: Albion had developed the ability to add scent to its cosmetic products and Anna was smitten with tea roses. “I would go to the farmers’ market every weekend at Union Square where they have these lavender tea roses,” she says. “I would put them in my bedroom and close the door and the whole room would smell of tea roses.”
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hat is clear from these stories is that Anna has always been ready to explore new models and adopt new methods whenever they’re viable. It is equally interesting to get her take on the world today, her views on the way we’re now all über-connected thanks to the Internet and social media. “Information travels so fast and that’s the biggest challenge today – how do you stay on top of that?” she says. “It’s like running on top of a ball: you can’t stop, you need to keep moving constantly – it’s hard. I don’t know how people do it.” Despite her acknowledgment that one must adapt to stay on top of things in an evermodernising world, Anna’s global empire has not seen her wave good-bye to her original home in the Garment District. The district remains integral to her business, not only for the headquarters but also for the fact that a lot of her clothes are still made there. But more importantly, the attachment is personal and shapes Anna's philosophy. “This is where I learned my craft, and going back to my first job, one of my tasks was to find fabrics for the collections,” she says. “I learned how to do that here. When I see a fabric, it speaks to me and it tells me what I can do with it and that is why it is so important for a designer to find her resources and medium. And the other thing I tell my students and young designers is that you need to learn your craft, to know how things are made, to understand how fabric drapes. Again, technology is changing that, but when you see really beautiful clothes, you know the person behind them understands what to do with the fabrics and shapes.”
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The fact that Anna has not left the district shows her loyalty to New York, the town that made her. But although her brand remains quintessentially New York, she tends to find her inspiration elsewhere, anywhere. Her Fall/Winter 2014 collection, for example, is inspired by her travels to Asia in the past year. “I loved going to Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and I love that whole Peranakan culture; it was almost super-Chinese, almost slightly exaggerated, and the colours are a little different.” Many a designer has probably picked up this reference and used it, but it’s the way Anna uses it that makes it distinctively hers. “‘How can I make this whole look really cool?’” she wonders out loud, vocalising her internal process. “I had seen this silent film that Anna Mae Wong made in England called Piccadilly and the styling for it is so great. I went back to look at it again and in the opening scenes she’s dressed in black-and-white T-shirts with these miniskirts and Mary Janes and a little beret. And I thought, ‘She’s dressed exactly how Mary Quant was when I met her. I met Mary Quant a few years ago and I was so impressed with how she still has her look even though she’s older, and I thought, ‘How can I have this fantasy of dressing Anna Mae Wong but also make it swinging-‘60s, very Mod and Biba-esque?’ That’s how I preceded with the collection, so you see a mix of those two ideas. I think that’s what I’m known for, putting together these very different thought processes and then it coming out very Anna Sui.” Perhaps it is this juxtaposition of different elements that
When you see beautiful clothes, you know the person behind them understands what to do with the fabrics and shapes.
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I've always said to young people who want to be designers, you can always find your own way. It is never exactly like the way somebody else did it. has contributed significantly to the longevity of her brand. “I think people pick up on things that they are in tune with and it reminds them of something – something in the past, something new. So I think that has been part of the success of my brand – many people can identify with it.” She is now reaching even more people and the future is currently on her mind. A collaboration with Italian sports brand FILA in China is in its second season, and her fragrances are now being distributed to India, the Middle East and China. Over in Russia, a new fragrance will hopefully soon be released. Unlike many of the other international labels today, Anna Sui still belongs very much to Anna. Privately owned labels are becoming rarer these days as smaller houses are bought out, swallowed up by luxury conglomerates. This has changed the international landscape drastically from when Anna started out. “I think it is more difficult today because everything just costs that much more, especially real estate, especially in New York. I was lucky because at the time when I started, real estate was at a low. I don’t know how easy it would be without a lot of backing today. But again, as I’ve always said to students and young people who want to be designers, you can always find your own way. It is never exactly like the way somebody else did it, and you really are a product of your time and you can’t change that.” It’s still possible to make it as a fledgling designer today, she points out. “It just happens in a different way from
when I started, and you just have to be flexible to that.” As our meeting comes to a close, we arrive at the question of what it is like to be an Asian designer today. Interestingly, this is a dialogue Anna had not engaged in until the SEA of Luxury Conference in Singapore last November. “That conference was the first time I participated in the topic and I think that it is something that is really important right now. It’s just the way I did it and the times allowed for it. That’s what is happening right now with Asian designers. I don’t think we were in the economic or cultural situation before for this to happen for Asia; now it’s the time, it will shift again.” Anna refers to a recent CNN programme about African designers. “They are doing amazing things. That’s evolution, and I’m lucky to be a part of that and it’s an exciting thing. It’s something that happened for me.” Today, Asia is what is “happening” – and the question is: when is a big designer going to emerge from Asia? To Anna it could be “any minute now.” After all, she says, Asian students dominate the design schools, and much of the relevant technological developments and manufacturing happens in Asia. “It is such an exciting moment for young Asian designers,” she says, “It’s all about to happen for them.” If what will happen is anything like what happened for Anna Sui then they should brace themselves. Exciting times are ahead.
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